Carolyn: The Heritage Angel

I aim to create great visitor experiences: those memorable days out with family and friends that stimulate chats and tweets, inspire sketching and photography, encourage exploration and reflection.

My expertise in interpretive planning, understanding leisure visitors, site management, innovative engagement and development for cultural and natural heritage sites, museums and visitor centres benefits people and places through conservation, tourism and enterprise.

I'm passionate about delivering creative approaches that balance visitor enjoyment and engagement with the special qualities of places and significance of collections.

What I do

I enjoy working collaboratively and aim to add value and capacity to client and consultant teams working on new museums and exhibitions, tourism projects, heritage led regeneration and destination development.

Divine Twitterings

"We find Carolyn’s enthusiasm, knowledge and professionalism inspiring. It seems Carolyn can turn her hand to any subject with excellent results. Our clients enjoy working with her, as do we. We cannot recommend her highly enough. She is a mean consumer of tea!"

Chris Walker, Director, Bright White

Case studies

Carolyn is the lead consultant supporting the Cathedral’s Round 2 HLF submission, producing an Interpretation Plan and Activity Plan, and working with Bivouac Design to prepare a scheme design and cost plan for the medieval fratry and cathedral library. The development project will provide greatly enhanced access to and engagement with the cathedral and the buildings within the close, along with new facilities to support the Cathedral’s future sustainability and its role as a community and tourism asset.

An Interpretation Strategy for a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) bid on behalf of Historic Scotland. This project, located in Stirling, will create a training centre and national hub that showcases Scotland’s rich variety of built heritage, materials, skills and innovative technologies to help repair and restore traditional buildings, whether croft or castle. Associate interpretive planner for Bright White Ltd. See here for more details.

Interpretation plan and creative content to improve visitor insight and engagement with the abbey ruins for one of the National Trust’s flagship sites with Paragon Creative Ltd. Visitor outcomes include a greater understanding of the monastic ‘ideal’, the purpose of different spaces, how they link to one another, and that the Abbey was the original template for self sufficiency. Interpretive interventions will complement volunteer-led guided tours and add value to the guidebook, while ensuring visitors enjoy exploring the historic spaces.

Interpretation Strategy and visitor management advice for two major rock art sites to support a World Heritage Site nomination on behalf of the Supreme Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) with Aylin Orbasli, Conservation Management Consultant & Peter Whitehead, Masterplanner. The archaeological sites contain an extensive record of 10,000 years of rock art and were successfully inscribed as new World Heritage Site in July 2015.

interpretation mentoring and development planning to help deliver Arts Council England’s five strategic goals, enhance the museum’s appeal for family visitors and devise new display approaches for their extensive aviation history, helicopters and nationally significant Falklands Conflict collections. The support work, funded by Museum Development Yorkshire, will inform future funding applications and fundraising activity.

Interpretation Framework to inform the development of Cork’s extensive mercantile, maritime and military heritage into compelling visitor propositions to inspire public and private sector investment and help grow Cork’s international tourism markets, for Failte Ireland with Telltale Ltd

Tullie House Museum and Art GalleryCarlisle

Preparation of an interpretation plan and development vision, working for L&R Consulting. The consultant team have produced an options appraisal and creative recommendations that radically address the challenges of collections storage and access, sustainable revenue generation and visitor engagement. The vision is enthusiastically supported by the Trustees, and visitor testing of ideas will take place over the coming months. Carolyn is helping the FOH team to develop new skills as gallery guides and collection interpreters.

Princes of Gwynedd Landudno, Wales

Heritage Tourism Project

Interpretive planning, content development and delivery will provide an integrated approach to the provision of interpretation across Gwynedd and Conwy, including the Snowdonia National Park, to reveal and enhance the untold story of the medieval Princes of Gwynedd and encourage exploration of the cultural landscape.

Stamford Heritage HubLincolnshire

Creating a new destination for the historic stone town of Stamford that interprets the streetscape and built heritage of the town through its archives, artefacts and oral histories. Working with Leach Colour Ltd (on behalf of Lincolnshire County Council), Carolyn produced an interpretation strategy, developed content and wrote copy for this innovative resource for local residents and tourist visitors that encourages exploration of the town.

Heritage Herald

Putting a major road past Stonehenge into a tunnel could benefit the world heritage site if the scheme is well designed and constructed, an international report has concluded.

Heritage bodies in England have welcomed the report by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the UN’s cultural body Unesco, which said there were positive impacts of building a 1.8-mile tunnel for the A303 past the stones. Read more...

Climate change now poses the single biggest threat to the world’s most famous heritage sites – including the Galápagos islands, the Statue of Liberty, Easter Island and Venice – according to a UN sponsored report.

The researchers looked at 31 natural and cultural world heritage sites in 29 countries that are vulnerable to increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, rising seas, more intense weather, worsening droughts and longer wildfire seasons. They believe this number is the tip of the iceberg. Read more...

Contact Me

I draw inspiration from my surroundings. My office is close to the historic city of York, and I'm lucky enough to have the North York Moors National Park and the North Yorkshire Heritage Coast nearby when I need to blow the cobwebs away! I travel widely across the UK (and overseas) for work. If you provide the tea, I'll bring the biscuits.